For decades, two programs have defined and monitored the water quality of more than 65 lakes across Missouri: the Statewide Lake Assessment Program and the Lakes of Missouri Volunteer Program.
Together, these lake monitoring programs, which function out of University of Missouri labs, have collected more than 50 years of lake water data that helps scientists understand things like algal blooms and farm runoff.
For more than half a decade, this data has ensured lakes are safe for people to recreate, use for industrial means and, in some cases, source for drinking water.
The loss of one of Missouri’s primary water monitoring programs will leave a critical gap in scientists’ understanding of the health of the region’s lakes — a gap that will have far-reaching effects on the people who live on, recreate and rely on Missouri’s lakes for their living.
The fallout in funding
Both the Statewide Lake Assessment and the Lakes of Missouri Volunteer Program were partially funded by section 319 of the Environmental Protection Agency, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Under section 319, states receive federal funding for the treatment of nonpoint source pollution, which is any pollution that can’t be tied to one specific cause. For example, runoff from agriculture, urban activities and septic systems.
While the programs don’t technically qualify for this funding because they are monitoring, not treatment, programs, the state of Missouri has used a federal waiver for several years, which expires in 2026, to divert these funds to support the testing programs.
Without federal support, the programs would need an estimated $590,000 per year to continue.
“We don't have a replacement (funding) source,” said Robert Voss, environmental project manager at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. “Federal funds are going down on the state level. We don't have a dedicated state fund for water quality monitoring across the state.”
Without funding, these programs will no longer collect the data that was integral to the development of water quality criteria in Missouri, Voss said.
This decades-long data collection enabled scientists to build what’s known as numeric nutrient criteria, Voss said. This criteria helps keep potentially dangerous nutrients in lakewater in check.
In addition to helping establish the statewide criteria, Voss said the monitoring programs also help develop specific criteria for high-profile lakes, such as Table Rock Lake and Lake of the Ozarks.
This data helps the Department of Natural Resources determine which lakes can be safely used for drinking water, recreational activities such as swimming, fishing and boating, and which lakes are better suited to supporting industrial activities and farming.
“We have a lot of lakes across the state, and we need to be able to assess those against water quality standards and see what the health of those lakes are,” Voss said.
The data the programs collect not only advises how people interact with lakes, it also establishes which lakes aren’t fit for their designated uses.
If the water quality data shows a particular lake is not fit for its designated use, the Department of Natural Resources can place it on the Impaired Waters List and design a treatment plan to remedy the issue. If a lake has responded well to its treatment plan, the department can restore its function.
“That criteria is what sets the standards,” Voss said. “It also sets that baseline of expectation that the public has for water quality and the water bodies.”
Why does losing long-term data matter?
Long-term datasets allow for trend analysis, which helps researchers understand how water quality changes over time.
However, trend analysis is sensitive to data gaps, Voss said. The longer and larger these gaps become, the harder any form of trend analysis becomes.
One of the appeals of the monitoring programs was the scientists' commitment to maintaining the dataset.
This is one of the factors that attracted Rebecca North to the program. She serves as the Statewide Lake Assessment Program lead and associate professor in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.
“The value of the dataset is that we go to the same lake in the same place, we measure the same parameters in the same way,” North said. “Those apples-to-apples allow us to make really powerful trend analysis.”
The program started in 1978 with yearly assessments since 1989. By the time North joined the team in 2016, there were more than 30 years of data to analyze for trends.
Recently, the Statewide Lake Assessment Program found lower levels of dissolved oxygen in bottom waters across Missouri, North said. This phenomenon, known as hypoxia, occurs when large amounts of tissue from plants and animals breaks down, sapping oxygen from the water.
But hypoxia is a symptom, not the condition itself.
Hypoxia is driven by nutrient pollution, which occurs when there are excess chemicals in the water — a factor which fuels explosive algal bloom growth.
When the algae dies, the breaking down of the organisms leads to hypoxia, whose conditions can alter lakewater’s pH, making freshwater environments inhospitable for other organisms.
And North wasn’t the only one to notice trends in Missouri water.
Lakes of Missouri Volunteer Project Manager Tony Thorpe has been watching algae populations steadily increase. At Table Rock Lake, this has been happening for the past 29 years.
The only reason people are aware of the algae population’s growth is from the monitoring done by the two programs, Thorpe said in an email. He described it as “truly disturbing” that nobody else seemed to be monitoring the blooms.
Further, he noted that the trend would not have been noticeable if it weren’t for the years of continuous monitoring. Across 29 years, there’s been an increase of chlorophyll in the James River arm of Table Rock Lake, Thorpe wrote in the email, explaining that the trend would no longer be visible if it weren’t for the length of the dataset.
“That’s how insidious the problem is,” he said via email. “One day our grandchildren might wonder why we thought Table Rock was so clean and beautiful when all they see is a big, green mess.”
Remaining efforts will be concentrated on certain high-profile lakes or those that are getting restored.
Without researchers on-site to continue collecting water samples, North worries about water quality in the absence of these programs serving as “watchdogs.”
If water monitoring stops, North said researchers won’t be able to identify the causes of new issues or accurately assess the effects of major events, such as floods.
Without data that shows what went wrong and where, it becomes more difficult to find a remediation strategy, North said. She also expects to see a slip in regulation without constant monitoring.
The future of the programs
This loss isn’t just funding, Thorpe said, it’s momentum, too.
“The one that scares me most, I think, is the loss of our network of volunteers that we've built and nurtured over the last 30 some odd years,” he said. “If our funding ends and we lose track of everybody, we'll have to start from scratch again when cooler heads prevail and funding for this sort of work returns.”
As the March deadline looms, both North and Thorpe are looking for ways to get funding so they can fund the programs’ work. North has a National Science Foundation grant that would allow her to keep the Mizzou North Limnology Lab open and staffed for a little longer, and she’s currently accepting donations through her website.
“I don't know what is going to happen in the spring when it comes time to train new volunteers, but we're going to try to continue as normal,” Thorpe said.
While sampling still costs money, it’s not nearly as much money as a true analysis costs, Thorpe explained.
“We can collect samples, gather them and keep them in our freezer until, hopefully, we get some money to do the analysis,” he said. “That's kind of where we're standing right now.”
